Cynthia Ann Parker
Cynthia was an older sister of John Parker, captured in the same raid as her brother, at the age of about ten (though possibly as young as eight or as old as twelve). She remained with the Comanche for nearly two and a half decades. She married and bore three children, one of whom would become the Comanche Chief Quanah Parker – the last Comanche chieftain of their days of freedom from the reservation.
After being captured she was given to a married Comanche couple who raised her as their daughter, and when of age she married Pete Noconah. In Comanche culture men, especially chieftains like Noconah often, if not usually, took several wives. It is a testament to their marriage that Pete Noconah did not, and Cynthia was soon a Comanche in every way possible besides birth.
In 1860 she was found and retaken by Texas raiders, who killed Noconah, and Cynthia was discovered to have blue eyes. During questioning, she revealed what she remembered of the Fort Parker massacre, where she had been captured by the Comanche, and it was determined that she was Cynthia Ann Parker. She was returned to her birth family to nationwide acclaim.
Texas granted her a ranch and a pension and she was accepted, at least superficially, as a full-fledged member of the white community, although she did not fully give up her Comanche ways. She became the subject of much speculation and attention from eastern writers, who published her story with embellishments for much of the rest of her life.
She died in 1871, having never fully adjusted to her life away from the Comanche, and her son Quanah later had her body moved from its original site in Anderson County, Texas to one near Cache, Oklahoma. He was buried alongside her upon his death, and both bodies were later moved to Fort Sill. Cynthia was the inspiration for the novel and later film, The Searchers, which were loosely based on the more than two-decade search by her relatives and the Texas Rangers to find her.